Week 4 -How-can-learners-be-helped to master grammatical accuracy?

Successful learning of anything requires motivation and interest. If one is not interested in a topic or there is not a valid reason to gain a specific knowledge, then one would not go about in departing with one’s own effort.

To me grammar is something, which is very rigid, structured, and not at all interesting to learn. Since joining Paul’s class, he surely motivated me to self learn and gave me a new light to English grammar. Paul learnt his English grammar, not formally through a teacher, but by reading books and finding out answers by himself.

I believe English grammar is very difficult to teach, because it can be perceived as a very dry and uninteresting subject. Although, we still need to relay the formulas of the sentence structures, and explain the reasons behind such structures, we can present in ways, which will keep the students interested.

As I mentioned in one of my previous articles, our five senses together can play a big role in helping us learn. Each sense enforces each other in retaining information. Learning grammar structure requires us to memorise the order of words, which one goes where, and when to use such structure etc.

In addition to using our five senses, individual involvement and personal experience are also important to learning and retaining information into our memory. Individual involvement and personal experience allow us to associate with a piece of information, in this case a grammatical structure.

For example, let’s teach the verb element. Maybe the teacher can ask each student to do an assigned action, read a book, drink from a bottle of water, or chew a gum, or sing a song, etc. A student is then required to say what he /she was doing. From there, the teacher can explain what a verb is. The teacher then gives examples of sentences including the verbs, which were used and performed by the students. Each student takes turn to give an example of a sentence using his/her verb. Hopefully, from the sufficient examples shared within the class, students can see the trend of sentence formation and ‘feel’ how verbs are used. The teacher enforces their learning with other activities.

As a teacher I would like to give students a good impression and a good experience of the English Grammar. I think this would help them to enjoy, first of all, acquainting with this aspect of the English language, and then hopefully, the students can develop an intimacy with it.

I believe a student’s participation in specifically designed activities is important, in addition to the other elements for learning, as mentioned above. So, how can teachers help students to engage in interesting, enjoyable and meaningful activities, which will enable students to learn and retain what they have learnt? Repetition or drilling is still necessary for mastering grammar accurately. The question here is how teachers can facilitate students to drill with enjoyment and effectiveness. This would be a call for creativity on the teachers' part.